Oscar Race Clarifies Roles as Director, Producer, Writer, and Editor Considered – The Hollywood Reporter
On Thursday, the same day that voting for the Oscar nomination opened, a group of four of Hollywood’s most prestigious associations (the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America), the trade association (the American Association of Directors and the American Association of Writers of Producers of America) and the honorary professional association (Movie Editors Association of America) weighed in with their own nominations, which may offer hints as to what is to come from the Academy. .
Unexpectedly, the biggest beneficiaries of the day were Sand dunes and Licorice pizzathose are the only two films to register in the top category (or one of the top categories equally) of all four groups. Belfast and The power of the dog landed with all three movies for which they were eligible (the WGA only considers titles made under the terms of its Minimum Basic Agreement, which very few non-US productions have). West story miss only with ACE. And Clap, clack… Boom!, King Richard and Don’t look up only miss with DGA (although Clap, clack… Boom! helmsman Lin-Manuel Miranda had a land nominated for best first-time director).
In addition to those eight movies, three other movies have scored multiple mentions: CODA and Being a Ricardianwith PGA and WGA, and French Dispatchwith WGA and ACE.
Meanwhile, progress with only WGA is Nightmare Alley and only for ACE is There’s no time to die and Cruella.
What do Thursday’s developments really tell us about the Oscar race?
On one level, not as many as these types of nominations have been in the past, for reasons I explained in a column I posted earlier today: in a nutshell, 25% of Academy members have never been. currently live outside of the United States, and most of them do not belong to Hollywood honorary associations, trade associations, and professional associations, so their tastes are currently undetermined, which means much is still subject to change – especially for the sake of formidable non-English speaking candidates like Drive my car, Parallel mothers, The hand of God, World’s ugliest person and A hero.
On the other hand, there are some movies that are almost certain will would have appeared among these nominations if they were really in serious competition for a Best Picture Oscar nomination, but weren’t.
Whenever the PGA – the only group of these to take 10 slots and fill them with a preference ballot, just like the Academy – and the Academy diverges on their top nominations, almost always there was a case where the PGA featured a populist blockbuster and the Academy then returned it to a certain artist. This predestination goes to recent PGA nominees Bridesmaids and The girl with the dragon tattoo in 2012, Straight Outta Compton in 2016, Deadpool in 2017, Wonder Woman in 2018, Crazy Rich Asians and A quiet place in 2019, Ford v Ferrari and Pull out the knife in 2020 and Borat Next Moviefilm in 2021.
And it happened with the Bond movie too Skyfall back in 2013, it seemed to me that the PGA was willing to nominate a Bond movie, but chose not to do so this year with There’s no time to die – and if a movie like There’s no time to die unattainable with PGA, highly doubt that it can be achieved with Academy. The same goes for this season’s only heavyweight contender, the even team bigger to hit, Spider-Man: There’s No Time to Die.
Now that all the major industry “predecessor awards” have been weighed, it’s a good idea to return to see which films have – and haven’t – clicked through town. (Based on recent history, the film with the most predecessor noms is not necessarily win the Oscar for best picture, but provided that every branch of the Academy gets the weight of the Oscar best picture, it certainly gets nominated; and almost all of the best picture nominations have performed admirably among the predecessors.)
Sand dunes appeared at the front of the field with 12 noms forerunners – indeed, it was nominated for the highest award of each group except Top SAG Award, best group: PGA, DGA, WGA, ACE, Association of Cinematographers of America, Association of Art Directors, Association of Cinematic Sound, Association of Page Designers Costumes, Hair and Makeup Stylist, Cinema Sound Editor, Association of Composers and Lyricists, and Visual Effects Association. In other words, it needs to be taken very seriously – more seriously than many have ever taken it – in the Oscar race.
With eight predecessor noms, each noms is The power of the dog (PGA, DGA, ACE, ASC, CAS, CDG, SCL and MPSE) and West story (PGA, DGA, WGA, ADG, CAS, CDG, MPSE and MUHS), although both are Sand dunesalso – and inexplicably – missed out on a best overall SAG category. West story also due to weird misses with both ACE and ASC (apparently there is a bad relationship between ASC and former ASC member Janusz Kaminski).
Don’t look up and There’s no time to die each group was selected by six groups (the former by SAG, PGA, WGA, ACE, ADG and SCL and the latter by ACE, ADG, CAS, CDG, MPSE and MUHS), while five groups each Belfast (SAG, PGA, DGA, ACE and MPSE), Licorice pizza (PGA, DGA, WGA, ACE and ADG) and Nightmare Alley (WGA, ADG, ASC, CDG and MPSE).
Landing four each French Dispatch (WGA, ACE, ADG and SCL), King Richard (SAG, PGA, WGA and ACE), Clap, clack… Boom! (PGA, WGA, ACE and MPSE) and Cruella (ACE, ADG, CDG and MUHS), and three each CODA (SAG, PGA and WGA), Green Knight (ADG, CDG and SCL), Gucci house (SAG, CDG and MUHS), In the heights (ADG, CDG and MPSE), Matrix Recovery (CDG, MPSE and VES), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (ADG, CDG and VES), Spider-Man: There’s no way home (CAS, CDG and MPSE) and Macbeth’s Tragedy (ADG, ASC and MPSE).
